The threat posed by Zohan Mamdani

By publicly and forcefully denouncing Zohran Mamdani as “a danger to the security of New York’s Jewish community,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of New York City’s Park Avenue Synagogue has demonstrated yet again why he is one of the most important and most influential Jewish leaders on the American scene.

He is not just a man of the highest intellect and integrity, although he embodies both qualities to the fullest. He is a class act who has the courage of his convictions. In the interest of full disclosure, I am also extremely fortunate that he is both my rabbi and a friend.

His sermon last Saturday in which he sets forth in detail why Mamdani’s candidacy for New York City mayor is dangerous in the extreme has been widely cited during the past week. I want to highlight here and elaborate on one particular passage. “My real concern,” Rabbi Cosgrove said, “is the painful truth that Mamdani’s anti-Zionist rhetoric not only appeals to his base but seems to come with no downside breakage. . . . The fact that the latest polls suggest that the Jewish community of New York is almost evenly split between Mamdani and Cuomo further names the problem to be not one of our fellow New Yorkers, but our fellow Jews.”

This is the five-alarm fire bell that should get all of our attention. Far too many New York City Jews seem to be either unfazed by or oblivious to the very real dangers posed by the prospect of a Mamdani mayoralty. The issue is not his disagreement with the policies of the Netanyahu government, which many of us share. The unambiguous reality is that anyone who endorses Mamdani and plans to vote for him validates a hostility to the continued existence of the State of Israel.

Rabbi Cosgrove is far from alone in raising his voice. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, and Elisha Wiesel, the president of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, have been equally outspoken. So has New York Times columnist Brett Stephens, among others. More than 900 rabbis, cantors, and rabbinic and cantorial students nationwide, at last count, have signed a letter declaring that “We will not accept a culture that treats Jewish self-determination as a negotiable ideal or Jewish inclusion as something to be ‘granted.” The safety and dignity of Jews in every city depend on rejecting that false choice.” Among them are Reform rabbis such as Rabbis Joshua Davidson and Jeffrey Salkin, Orthodox ones such as Rabbis Chaim Steinmetz and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, and Conservative ones such a Rabbis David Wolpe and Michael Siegel.

Why am I now adding my voice to theirs? Because not doing so could be misconstrued as acquiescence or indifference on my part. And because, in stark contrast to Mamdani, former Governor Andrew Cuomo is a proven friend and longtime ally of the Jewish community. As I wrote this past June prior to the Democratic primary, “we can either have a mayor who identifies with the city’s Jewish community and who has never made a secret of his support for Israel, or we can have a mayor whose sympathies will lie with the proponents of surgent antisemitism and anti-Zionism.” This is the choice that remains in front of us.

“I wish we had two candidates with equal interest,” Rabbi Cosgrove said, ”or better yet, equal disinterest in the Jewish community. I would love nothing more than our mayoral contest to be focused solely on affordability, food instability, education, policing, sanitation, taxes – the everyday issues that shape our great city’s life. A contest where all of you could argue to your heart’s delight about which policies best serve the future of our great city, and I could give sermons on – well – anything else. But this election cycle, that is simply not the case. We can only play the cards we are dealt. And in this hand, I choose to play the one that safeguards the Jewish people, protects our community, and ensures that our seat at the table remains secure. I choose steadiness over spectacle, tested loyalty over reckless gamble.”

I, for one, wholeheartedly agree. The stakes are far too high for us – all of us – not to do everything in our power to bring about a record turnout for Cuomo at the ballot box. Silence is simply not a viable option.

 

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School, lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, and general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress. He is the author, most recently, of Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).